precious

agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream
1. typeface

it gives up questioning
the meat.
it eats whatever's dead on the ground.

2. a noteable source

a dish of kings:
liver and
fava beans.

tell-tale detrius: red,
its repository the face
of what's-its-name.

3. not to say i didn't enjoy it

(purple
over red)
pigeon-toed

over the graves of
some of our finest dead.
(red

over black) the object-rich
dirt: lightless earth
and the raw meat.

4. (dream)
your hair
about
my wrists,

lover,
when i
am dead.

blue veins
that beat
for you only:

tie their stillness
together, tie it
in that// /black/// / /river.

5. (break)
e questo?
songs piecemeal
in the wind--

e questo?
is it still singing,
precious?

e questo?
(wind against
a face)

e questo?
(pellucid
in meat)

e questo?
and this one?
god, and this one?

m'easjg;geska;

agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream

I.

with irony as its mistress, agony as its guiding principle, it wanted to write something a little dark--a little off--with a soft glow to it, like a prom dress--on a beach, with a large drink--in siena, named after paint.

humbled in silver or glorious in gold, like a worked mask for a face: some kind of cheap ceremonial of death, things going into the ground and not coming out, and the psychological chicanery of closure.

II. foaming at the chops
yesterday
it asked little more from you

than a nod

for the pants
to come off,
vespucci.

III. schleppin'

insignificant details of the highway at night:

the crossroads

the indiscriminate meat,
the headlights

strains of meyerbeer on the tape deck,
the house on the left,
the mastabatory bag on the seat

IV. dream

i am full of pain

when i die,
i demand,

tie your black hair

about my wrists

wrap my wrists
in your black hair

V. from the diary of pembroke:

it loves it. and will love it. the ground is unyielding.

propriete

agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream

with your hair bound about these wrists
jespeth.
it is demanded.

opened at diverse points:
the mouth, wrist.
the raw flesh riding
over the brittle bone
like a horse ridden
over a waterless plain.

why did its white salt take you in
if it could not draw you down?
sunset driven to the hilt
into the horizon's dirt--
why did not it drown itself
in the black river of your hair,
wreck itself like wind
against the song of your face,
open itself like splitting forms
against you?

it gives up questioning
the meat.
it eats whatever's dead on the ground.

everyone steals from puccini

agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream

1.
i did have a vampire lover once. he came out of the night with blood like rubies on his lips, blood glistening on his mouth like micated silt at the bottom of a wine-dark sea. he liked to kiss me on my pulses. and he brought me white roses. my purity, he said, attracted him like a death's-head hawkmoth to a vestal flame. anyway i slept with him. but i was drunk when i did it.

2.
since all forms
broke.
loosed

like oil
from a split lamp.

3.
the apocryphal pembroke was, it has been determined, in a forest. moths and serpents abounded, apparently; the green trees and the dappled ground were both present as was requisite. lupine bloomed exquisitely* and from tree to tree hanged strung spanish moss as if it were catgut spun out and slack on a lute's rosewood fingerboard. he wrote thus:

with the world as my bier.

he was crazy; the squirrels ate his parts. but my eyes are raw for him.

4.

it demands of you:

wrap its wrists

in her black hair

when it is dead.

5.
[excitedly]
...sent to me from Heaven
Straight from the throne of Glory,
Take one last and careful
look At its poor face!
That its memory may linger,
One last look!
Farewell, beloved! Farewell, my dearest heart!
Go, play, play.

all my trials, lord

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.
when you look at it, capital R is a pretty character. i wish i were less of a failure at everything. whinety whine whine.

i develop my own vocabulary

agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream

we went walking in the supermarket
with walt whitman.

there were peaches.
there may have been innuendo.

it's a big world.
it was a good time.

low res

candyland

the way sweat
glistens
on the lines of a palm

etched
the press
of a multifaced
coin

i will buy such
things
i know not yet
what
they are.

caught fire white fire

from the diary of pembroke:

...leads, in its execution, to an excess of self-reflection. the seeds of my madness are in fact contained in what i can finally describe, at this late date, as the parameters, the x and y axes, if i will, of said "it": the heterocletian phylogeny of ex versus for example why, the infinitely split horticulturalist of the mind for example, the house of wax for example or for example the ecumen of the encepalopath.
i continue to think i shall die, because i have been made according to the parameters of meat. however it is possibly a vain comprehension of said existence to insist upon its period. instead it may spiral ever-inward like a pinwheel, gaining on itself.
i am rotting
as i speak

the sorrows of your changing face